Profile

BRIANNE CURRAN:

is an improvising violinist from Sydney, Australia currently based in Berlin. Having played the instrument since the age of 3, she has a background in numerous musical fields but her focus is on improvised music and its tangeants. Relationship between artist, environment and audience is of major interest in her approach to music making and its developments. Also of interest is how to break the box of ‘the violinist’.

From 2004 she lived in the ACT and then the Blue Mountains in NSW. During this time she focused herself out in the Australian bush often in isolation, exploring ways to express and connect with the surrounding landscape, the moment, and space through music. She returned to her home town to complete her Bachelor Degree in Music (performance) as a scholarship holder in 2008 (ANU/AIM). Back in Sydney, Brianne got in touch with projects such as the Splinter Orchestra and the Nownow festival, initiatives founded by double bassist Clayton Thomas.

For 6 years she was band leader and manager of world/jazz quintet Takadimi founded in 2009. The band toured extensively throughout NSW and the East Coast of Australia, and released their debut album New Common Sense through MGM in 2011. The group gained widespread recognition throughout Australia via the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and numerous other radio stations and press around the country, such as national newspaper The Australian.

Since moving to Europe in 2015, she has performed at such festivals as the Krakow Jazz Autumn Festival (POL), Ad Libitum (POL), Musica Privata (POL), Mirror Mirror Festspiele (DE). She has also performed at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival (AUS), and the Nownow Festival (AUS).
Currently, she works regularly with the Krakow Improvisers Orchestra, and Andrew Lafkas’ Model Infinity Through Listening and Action Orchestra, and also in numerous projects with saxophonist/clarinetist of the second generation of European Improvisers; Luc Houtkamp.
Her first solo release ‘Stalin and the Berlin bush’ was for the National Film and Sound Archive Australia (2015).

‘Through visceral strings, ambient rooms, aching reverb and first-person field recordings we are placed in the role of voyeur – bearing silent witness to Curran’s decoding of the (foreign) city.
Both meditative and mental hurdle, the 23 minute piece challenges listeners to be still and absorb, whilst translating its layered sounds into an unyielding message – one that speaks of intimate place and bears witness to Curran’s methods by which she grapples with her role within it’.

‘Brianne Curran improvises with an expressive freedom, dynamic energy and a desire to dig into the moment that is rare. Carrying the gift of a great education, she wields music of great clarity and force’.
– Clayton Thomas (Australia)